Fallout 4 - Prepare thyselves

I stopped caring that you were simply voicing your opinion when you decided to do so by nitpicking my opinion. No one was stopping you from voicing your opinion but you choose to do so in a way that came across as belittling mine.

 

/facepalm.

Your reply indicates the opposite. So, your point is....?

 

My point is that you're not simply trying to present your subjective opinion so much as trying to force it on others.

 

Which is incorrect assumption on your part as pointed out earlier. Anything else?

 

Your posts paint a very different picture.

 

The "picture" they "paint" is result of your imagination running wild.

Text based information has that distinct property that it strips all non-verbal communication. So, when reading someone's messages, you start filling the gaps. "Oh this dude probably wants to achieve this or that" by doing it. So, you just start jumping to conclusion, and the conclusions are incorrect, most of the time.

The truth is that you don't know what other people think, feel and on the internet you don't even know what they look like and which language they speak. That's something worth keeping in mind.

So, don't make assumptions. ^_^

 

Once again I wasn't making an assumption. You were nitpicking my opinion. If you simply wished to post your own opinion you could have done so without pulling mine apart in the process.

 

No, she was disagreeing with your opinion and stating that she felt that was your intent. That being said, this has been a fun and refreshing thread, can we put the bicker on the back burner so we don't get a thread lock?

 

Which is incorrect conclusion obtained by filling the gaps with imagined information.

Shall we continue walking in circles for all the eternity?

To which I stated that the way she felt about my intent doesn't match actual intent.

Sure. That short exchange was certainly entertaining, but if a mod feels it is out of place, they can just cut it out. I certainly wouldn't mind.

 

Is this with or without the Idiot Savant perk?

Have you seen the mod that allows you to build even more objects in your settlement?

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/818/?

 

It is plausible. Some of the constructed objects, like water purifiers net decent experience bonus, more than killing enemies. With Either 6 or 8 int water purifier gives you about 26 xp, IIRC. And by building one huge tower you can definitely go from level 20 to level 21. basically one iron wall == one average enemy kill.

Speaking of the mod, I wonder if it could cause any trouble. I mean if you run into some hardcoded limit on number of objects you can get yourself corrupted save this way.

 

Until the Creation kit is officially released it's likely best to treat any mods as unstable. Hopefully any problems will crop up immediately and, if you're like me in this regard, chances are you will already have been saving fairly often and thus should only lose a few minutes of gameplay at most.

Interesting thing about this mod though is that it isn't really a mod. It's basically just two instructions you pass through the console to modify two internal variables. You could simply set the values lower if you feel like you want less of a risk.

 

I probably won't be touching that for a while. Collecting enough resources to build iron fortress of windmills of doom is gonna take too much time. And I don't feel like using cheats for that too. Maybe later.

Yeah, I understand that, the thing here is it is unknown what kind of structure bethesda uses for object storage. If it is anything dynamically sized all the way from object list down to serialization, the mod will be fine. However, if there's static array somewhere or uint16 instead of uint32 for something like object chunk offset in savefile... well you get the picture -> Crash to the desktop or corrupt save.

 

I think basically we're saying the same thing just we're different people so get our points across in a different way. By not obsessing over things I'm talking about striving for the perfect graphics, the scale of AAA open world games basically just setting expectations so high they make it impossible to actually achieve. So yes, exactly as you said they need to choose an art style they can pull off and (more importantly) pull off for the duration of the game project. Same for the world size and game scope in general.

I've ranted often about focusing so much on raw graphics quality and I'm really not against a game having excellent graphics. What I am always trying to get across (and probably doing a terrible job at) is there needs to be balance. And all of these things considered from the beginning. If someone (an individual or 2 to 3 person Indie team) wants to (and is capable) of achieving modern AAA presentation quality they need to design the game in such a way that supports that ambition while at the same time not delivering an empty experience. One way would be to make a game that occurs only in a single small town for example. Limiting the amount of content that needs to be created so they can focus on hitting that AAA graphics quality and do so in a way that lets them actually pull it off in a reasonable amount of time. On the other hand, if someone really wants to make a huge open world they should take the opposite approach (IMO) of keeping the presentation lean & mean, fast & easy to produce so they can fill out that world in a reasonable amount of time. Trade-offs is basically all I am getting at. It's when people try to "have it all" they are likely fighting a battle they'll never win and games that will probably never be completed.

 

Makes sense to me, I agree with that.

 

@Schneider21 Hey, I can't seem to pm you the code. It won't let me start a conversation with you.

 

Oh god, I really tried not buying Fallout 4...

On Sunday morning I gave in, I haven't opened Unity since then. I'm afraid, just like the Witcher I know I'll put down the controller eventually and start working on my game again but the last time I did something other than working on my game on my free time was back in May.

As a full time worker and part time gamedev, it actually feels good to put the project aside and use free time to get drawn in a game again.

I still don't know which faction to side with, the power armor from the BoS sounds nice but I only found 4 Fusion Cores so far..

I'm about 12 hours in, in FO3 I used to always listen to the radio where as in this one I leave it off and take the wasteland atmosphere in instead.

Really loving the game so far!

 

Again, define "graphics".. If you're an indie chances are you'll be using an engine, said engine gives you lighting systems and post out the box (or post can be bought in Unity's case).. Enlightens lighting system was used on BF4 etc. and UE's lightmass has been used on some of the best looking titles going. Integrations have been done already, so most of the legwork is taken care of.. "Graphics" as such isn't a problem in modern engines.! (not to say Unity couldn't do with some much needed UPP-GG-RR-AA--YY--EEE--DD--SS)

Of course there are limitations with Unity's implementation of Enlighten comparative and UE's lightmass isn't really suited to massive openworld games. But ultimately it boils down to this..... CONTENT!.

It takes ages to make tons of decent bespoke content to fill the massive openworld and artwork / quest's is a time sucking void. When I say Art I mean everything VFX (particles / weather systems etc.) / Muzzle flashes / Apex D / Animations / Characters / Gum flapping / Environment meshes / decals / sound VFX / Music / shaders etc. etc.

A lot of "AAA" artwork is a little hokey at best, there's just so much of it you tend to automatically bypass the fact unless you're actively looking for it. But it's not the artists fault per say, again there's soooo much content it's redonc.!

 

I agree completely! That's what I meant. Like I was telling another person I probably do a terrible job explaining when I post about graphics. What I am getting at is simply that people focusing on achieving a AAA graphics quality need to balance that out and find a way to lower the amount of content that is needed. Or at least realize up front what that decision means.

Like if someone here thinks oh man I am gonna make my own Witcher 3 / Fallout 4 that looks just as good and is just as big. First they probably won't and should choose do they want to focus on matching those graphics or matching the scale of the game? Make a choice. Something has to give. If they want that graphics quality I think that is awesome as long as they scale down the game. Or if they want to make the game like Witcher 3 / Fallout 4 as far as the game world adventure scale then don't also try to match the graphics.

Simply because sure they can knock out a model and texture for this thing and that thing then get shaders right lighting right and think oh yeah I can do this. But the amount of content they need to grind out for that scale of game means that making it all match that high quality level is going to take a lot of work and time. And all just for the assets themselves. Then they still need to build the actual game because even if they stick with it grinding all of those top notch assets out... a hard drive filled with high quality graphics assets is not a game.

 

Witcher 3 as an Indie is never going to happen, you could spend three years just polishing a game like that never mind anything else. Now Fallout is a different matter, I honestly wonder if it's "doable". Because it's not particularly well polished in any area and / or that big in terms of scope. There's enough templates / asset store systems and tools about, the characters aren't exactly amazing or that interactive.

When you look at Bethesda games they are pretty "basic" really, but the formula just works.! It's funny, because I've seen a fair few small teams make games in a similar vein (if not bigger, some are MMO's) and they don't seem to "work"..

Of course, I wouldn't mind their marketing budget if I were to attempt the above.

 

For me, Fallout 1 & 2 and New Vegas are the 'real' Fallout games. Fallout 3 and 4 are 'sort-of' Fallout games (Fallout Tactics is another 'sort-of' Fallout game, albeit in a different and even more "non-Fallout-y" way than F3&4). The characters and more so the (sub-)quests of New Vegas are much more interactive and world-changing (as in, the world changes) than in F3. The quests and choices that actually matter, which is a huge part of Fallout for me, is not easy to do well (requires a lot of content, or being the first to make a procedural living world that is actually interesting).

 

Bethesda had a great deal of assets to pull from their previous title. Someone wanting to create a similar game would have to create all of that content from scratch similarly to how Bethesda had to do with Fallout 3.

 

@Ryiah That 10 levels was without idiot savant (in fact, that particular character is rocking a starting int of 6).

 

Bethesda has "relatively" small art/level design team (that was described in their articles about modular design - forgot where I saw that), and levels are highly modular. So, approaching new vegas level is doable, although it will be very hard. Can't be done with one person, but can be done with small team.

Now, Witcher 3, though... that's absolutely impossible without serious money, because of all the texture work.

 

The asset store has plenty of content too, look at Witcher 3.. A lot of it was Manufaktura 4K packs and SpeedTree haha!..

@neginfinity

Nah I recon I could do it, if I was inclined to do so (Edit: also completely insane).. The core basis of our game isn't that different to Fallout and in terms of scope it's probably larger. As I made most of the art / systems myself I'd say it's "doable" if you're smart / have the money to speed things up..

It's a personal thing, it depends A) how much experience you have B) how much money you have C) how many years you have to spend on it (I'd probably say bout 3 - 4 years would cover it. D) What systems you'd put in (I'd remove all the building crafting crap straight away)..

 

I don't mean to belittle anyone, but with very few exceptions, no one here has made a game even close to the level of scope and quality of any title from Bethesda's catalog. If you could do it, you would have.

Yes, Bethesda's games are known for their quirky bugs, comparatively substandard animations, and middle-of-the-road textures. But their games are so much more than the sum of their parts. It's not the character models, the dialog systems, or the draw distance that makes them great; it's the way all these things come together to make an experience that is extremely enjoyable.

I've always found direct comparison of games ridiculous. One being really good doesn't preclude the other from amazing as well. It's like saying because Michaelangelo used a brush technique that da Vinci didn't use, his work was better and the Mona Lisa is garbage.

I'm particularly concerned that long-time members of this community seem to think this way. I would think that we of all people should understand the complexities involved in making games (more-so to make good games) and not trivialize the sheer amount of effort that surely goes into crafting such a huge experience. The art assets being modular doesn't make them any less well-crafted. The dialog system being different than your preference doesn't mean a ton of work didn't go into designing and building it.

I loved Witcher 3. And I love Fallout 4. Neither are perfect. But both are excellent games that demonstrate a level of quality and accomplishment of which I would be grateful to be considered on par with the smallest fraction. Analyzing a game's pros and cons is one thing, but suggesting these obvious labors of love took shortcuts, or that they could easily be recreated with a "Generate Western RPG" button are ridiculous.

 

Nobody said anything about "generate western rpg button", however, both games took shortcuts. It is not possible to create this kind of experience without using shortcuts. There isn't any issue with having shortcuts, finding shortcuts and using them is part of the job.

The reason why I stated that while people might have chance of recreating something similar to NewVegas but not witcher 3 is because of the way they're constructed.

Fallout titles went construction kit route. Everything is made out of precomputed pieces. There's model for a cup, for computer terminal, for a table, everything. Then those objects are instanced and spread around the level. That takes a lot of time, of course, but small team could, say, cut a bit on detail and attempt to create similar experience. The would need to cut on voice acting and some other features, but that is plausible. Doesn't mean it is gonna be easy or quick, though.

The problem with Witcher 3 is INSANE amount of polish. Every dialogue looks like someone wasted two weeks just setting cameras for it, side quests are comparable to primary in larger titles, and even minor npcs to whom you talk just once during the entire game has full set of proper facial animation, voiced audio and the texture is detailed to the point where you see pores on their skin.

THAT kind of thing cannot be done without serious manpower, which independent dev usually will not have.

There were, actually, precedents where small team could pull off higher quality graphics. For example, IIRC Miasmata's visuals were quite good at the time of the release. Someone actually modeled Elsweyr for Skyrim, and there were several full conversion mods for other games.

 

I had an issue with the word shortcuts as soon as I typed it, but I left it in anyway. Obviously all development is shortcuts. I guess what I was trying to say was that I didn't like the suggestion this was done in a lazy way, when in actuality, I believe all the shortcuts were done smartly.

So their construction kit uses prefabs. Not only do I not have a problem with this, I don't see how it's different than any other game. All these objects still had to be modeled, textured, some of them animated, given physics colliders and properties... Again, I don't see how this is different than any game and how it supposedly saved them time or effort.

Replicating Fallout while trimming features and simplifying others is not replicating it. Neither is doing it in 500x the amount of time Bethesda created it in. My old mentor drove me nuts when he'd say things like "Brain surgery isn't difficult. If I had the time to learn it, and all the resources, I could do it."

Yes, everything can be broken down into its constituent parts and approached individually. As programmers, that's what we do every day. But reasoning that these works are nothing more than those deconstructed elements all slapped together does a great disservice to the craft.

I have no doubt that small teams -- or even individuals -- can do great work. Even big work. But these teams couldn't have made Fallout 4. Not in the way we know and love. And I don't believe a single individual could do anything that could hold a candle to it. And I'd eat my hat if someone from these forums, who criticizes the quality of this or any well-crafted game like this could create something that was even worthy of being discussed in the same paragraph as them.

Anyone can be a critic. That doesn't mean you really know quality, much less make you capable of creating it.

 

Sorry but the whole "Generate Western RPG" and a few other statements like "labors of love took shortcuts" shows a lack of experience or understanding somewhere, games aren't "complicated" to make. They are invariably time consuming, not comparing games is a little silly also. You can obviously tell the difference between quality of technical components, you'd have to be blind not to tell the difference between well polished animation / sound / UI etc. etc. between games.

But you're assuming here that I believe FO4 is a bad game with little effort, which I never said. I think it's awesome, a flawed gem definitely.. A bad game with little effort, definitely not..

You're also assuming people here can't make games of the same vein or quality and assuming people haven't already, fact of the matter is shovel sellers have sped up the process a massive amount. Now it's the decision whether or not to start from scratch and truly craft your own experience which is the key factor.

But the argument is in a lot of cases why bother? Because a lot of systems do the same and like anyone would actually care.! World Machine to spit out weightmaps / r.tiles and UE can stream them with AI / Navmesh up to 20KM2 (might be more now), dialogue systems / quest systems can be bought you just need to customise the content. Using procedural placement to décor the terrain isn't that hard, creating the art like most AAA games you just use SpeedTree.

You can use Daz and Go-Z bridge to quickly modify characters to your own liking and then have them pretty much auto-rigged and WM'd ready to be animated, there's plenty of mocap houses / cam systems. FaceFX can spit out facial animations like no tomorrow, it doesn't take long to create a decent UI (if you know what you're doing). A lot of sound / VFX / Particles again can be bought.

Basic FPS templates are ten a penny, it might not save you that much time as it takes me about 30 minutes to prototype an FPS setup. There's tons of art asset packs you can buy and re-skin, hell as said even Witcher 3 had Manufaktura 4K packs used for villages.

I could go on and on how to make a game like FO.. Again I've been at this well over a decade, games aren't complicated they are time consuming.

 

Ack. I shouldn't have even said anything, haha. No one wins any debates on the Internet.

Complicated != Difficult.

I agree that the barrier of entry is much lower and making games has become much less difficult than it ever was. That doesn't mean they're not complicated, though. By definition, you have many complex systems interacting with each other... That is complication. It doesn't mean it's a problem, or that it's not doable, or that only super smart people on really big teams can figure it out. It's just complexity.

Games are complex. Tools like Unity and its available plugins abstract much of that complexity from the author, but the complexity is still there. And an amateur who is throwing piles of those plugins together in a slapdash fashion is going to drown in that complexity regardless. I don't need to understand the total working of the internal combustion engine to drive a car, but that doesn't make me a professional race car driver, either.

You're right, @ShadowK in that I'm very inexperienced. I'm a hobbyist, so I have no shame in that. It's not a lack of understanding that I suffer from, though. I enjoy games as a medium of communication, not just the output of a pile of code. We're talking about the difference between throwing in a skybox system that handles day-night transitions for you, compared to a carefully executed palette of light on the horizon that is intended to evoke a specific feeling in or action from the player. It's the difference between a tailor-made suit and buying a discount suit off the rack. Yes, they're both technically suits. But there's no meaningful comparison beyond that.

I meant what I said about not trying to offend anyone, and I didn't mean my comments as a criticism against you, your game, or anyone here. Maybe the people making criticisms have already or will soon release a game that is far better in every aspect. Nonetheless, it's just surprising to see the comments toned more along the lines of "it sucks" than "I understand why this compromise was made as the scope is this large and they're targeting this range of platforms" or something. That's all it is. Wishing for a higher level of respect in what we all do, especially towards teams like Bethsoft who have proven time and time again that they legitimately care about creating quality games.

 

If all of these different systems actually worked as needed and worked well together even these kind of 3D games should not take that long to make. I don't how it is on the 3D side because I have not done anything in 3D in 10 to 15 years. It used to be a lot of work. Now it must not be because I see completely "new" people knocking out little 3D games in weeks.

Anyway, I am guessing that most of these system assets are flawed in some way or the connectivity between them is an issue. Because if all of these major pieces exist including a massive amount of presentation content it seems like making 3D games should be incredibly fast these days.

I don't know though. For me personally, nearly everything that promises to make things easier and save time ends up with its own quirks and such that ultimately makes it all even more complicated and time consuming than if I just built it all from scratch myself. Maybe that is what the issue is for others as well and the reason we don't see "home grown" versions of Skyrim and such showing up on these forums each month.

 

I suspect it's due to the complexity. Yes, I could throw a dialogue system into a game and *BOOM*, now I have dialogue. And while it may be a perfectly functional system, if it's not perfectly optimized to work with my NPC management system, or the Inventory system, or the Procedural Generated Worlds system... things are going to start falling apart. Maybe it's just a small memory leak here and there, but when you're working on consoles or mobile, every last bit counts at that scale.

Another part of it is just the craft. Randomly generating trees on your endless voxel terrain is fine for your Minecraft-meets-CoD project you'll release for $15 on Steam Greenlight, but it won't give you that living, breathing world feel that the Big Boys pull off. I despise the term "hand-crafted" due to its overuse in every single industry right now, but there honestly is something the human touch provides, and a lot of it is a matter of taste and design... something that can't be short-cut with $40 plugins.

 

I often find the same thing, but I'm trying a different approach right now because building from scratch is a lot of effort too. Instead of just using these third party solutions directly in my client code I'm building out a modular "middleware for middleware" that I maintain myself.

For instance, if you need leaderboards there are a number of cloud services out there, but why should I keep refactoring my code every time they make a change or I want to pick a different one? Instead I just write my clients to use my own API and then my server has a module for various cloud services and essentially proxies the request after converting it to their specific API. They all offer roughly the same functionality so this is very doable with a minimal API.

It's not as efficient as just using the service directly but the benefit is I can change out providers pretty fast without touching a line of client code, just occasionally making an update to my server module code. It also saves me from writing the tougher parts that are actually doing the work.

 

That seems to be the proper way to use middleware, and is (I imagine) what bigger studios would do as well.

 

That's a great approach. Basically using the Adapter / Mediator patterns whenever relying on 3rd party stuff. I try to do that to a degree as well basically just writing wrappers around any 3rd party stuff. But the things I run into are always some key (seemingly obvious) functionality is missing. For example, I used an open source library recently to load in Tiled maps. This particular library I discovered provided no method to actually update a map cell only to get the contents of a map cell. So, I updated the open source project itself in this case and sent the update to the developer. It's things like this that always seem to crop up or the manner in which the data is stored internally even making it more cumbersome to work with than would otherwise be necessary.

I ended up in this case doing basically just as you mentioned. I wrote my own PlayfieldManager system that uses the Tiled system to load the tiled map data (again 2D games for me) and then copies all of that data out of the internal list of lists of lists data structure into a straightforward 2D array. Then I release the original Tiled loader object and am done with it. So it works fine this way. But still it's like I would have just wrote it all this way to begin with had I made the Tiled map loader myself.

EDIT: I should mention that I am grateful the Tiled loader is available and for the author creating it. It definitely saved me time writing my own XML parser for it. All I am saying is it would have been even nicer if it was just ready to "rock n roll" plug n play. But from this point on going forward I will have the solution to it. And that is basically my approach with all of this stuff. Just slowly ramping up with larger and larger projects over time. With each game building more tech and establishing more patterns. Which in turn make it easier & faster for me to tackle bigger and bigger projects. Kind of a perpetual motion machine. lol

 

Yeah I probably could have boiled my post down to essentially just writing your own wrappers for third party functionality, which I know a lot of devs do already. At that point you can either write your own module that performs the task, or swap it out for a third party solution. It seems so basic but I never saw the need until recently when I started actually using some of these cloud services - which can be fly by night sometimes.

 

Dead Island 1 on xbox 360 (I believe also on PC) had something along that lines before a certain patch, and the saves would get corrupted if you loaded too much stuff into the inventory of an NPC. It was a game with autosaving and didn't have more than that one save slot per character. Loading that character would crash the game. It happened to me 40+ hours into the game and I was super pissed. Had to spend a whole day with a hex editor and some tools to beat that savegame into a working state again through trial and error. It actually worked in the end and I was able to finish the game.

 

It's still a lot of work, but I "assume".. Meaning I wouldn't expect you'd still be "learning" at this point and bar the odd tidbit of info in which you say oh I learn something every day. I'd expect people tackling these sorts of games on skimpy man power budget to be on BFF terms for years with Unity / Unreal / Z-brush / Modo (or whatever) / SD / Pro tools (logic or whatever) / World Machine / Face FX etc etc. Which can take years by themselves to learn.

On top of that, not many people have the money to fund projects like these. Especially if you're in small teams / one man banding it you'll need money like not tomorrow or spend the next 10 years at. By that point the industry would have moved on and your game will look like FF7 by the time it gets released.

For e.g. to balance out performance / mesh sculpting / paint resolution you'd probably use a lot of small terrain blocks. You'd buy WM pro, unless you're gluten for punishment and / or immortal you'd never hand craft 127 perfectly formed tiles by hand. Then you're going to have to have a pretty fat marketing budget to make sure all your time and money doesn't go straight down a sinkhole.

I'd also assume you've tried this before, over the last 5 years or so I've binned 20 prototypes. You can probably guess at this stage I can get a prototype up pretty quickly. Plus as you said, you gotta know what works already, having "issues" with tools is a no-no..

Finally it comes down to this, as said before do you want a hand crafted experience? A hybrid or a cheap knockoff? With hand crafted being the most time consuming.

Summary: I KNOW it's possible, just being polite before. It's a dumb idea sure prone to many variable problems, but possible of course..

 

Taking on something big solo isn't just a matter of access to tools. Thats like saying "Well, I'm going to build this hand crafted lodge in the woods worth millions so let me just go get all the tools I need at home depot and figure out how to use them during construction."

I think it's great that F4 managed to get such an incredibly stable product out with a lot of replay value and playable satisfaction. Seeing some things that they clearly said "Meh, not that important, just make it work and move to something more significant" on some stuff makes it feel a lot more human to me. It seems like by doing that they had more focus on the overall game and it made a really great product.

 

Over the years I've often thought game dev should be easier (as in just not so involved and time-consuming). When I look back the main problem has always been basically the same on all machines. Building or otherwise just getting the basic functionality in place just takes a long time. And by the time I build it out ir piece it together from 3rd party stuff with duct tape the platform or dev kit is basically dead. lol

So my main rule is this time around to find the framework i will stick with even after it has become officially dead and just continue building infrastructure, systems and so forth by doing progressively bigger game projects until finally I can make something fairly epic within a few months time. That's what's needed at least for me. Having all of this stuff done. Reliable working systems that are easy to use and customize and otherwise enhance. No more wrestling with bugs in frameworks and other tech concerns so I can just focus on the actual game itself

 

Only generating the immediate state won't give you a living, breathing world, but what about simulating the history of the world starting from an arbitrary point in time?

 

Much agreed, I / myself could not do what I'm doing without Unreal Engine. Let me clarify, because I'm sure smarter people in bigger outfits could do whatever in any engine. But for what I'm making I've yet to come across any tools or systems I need, sure I made a few changes to the source but apart from that it's pretty much taken care of itself.

Not only that, I've found general game making quick and effective. Ultimate point being as you said, I'm focusing on making a game not tech or systems and that has ultimately opened up so many possibilities I never thought available.

I know @LaneFox says tools don't matter, but if you're trying to clear a forest with a butter knife you have to evaluate what tools you're using. I'm not saying UE is better than engine X, it's just really suited to what I'm doing.

But ultimately, I like that FO4 is pretty basic. So was Skyrim, because firstly as a dev I can't help but play a game whilst breaking it into it's basic components and it seems like something I could aspire to. Secondly it shows you CAN still make great games without going to silly lengths.. Because some games like W3 or Arkham Knight are like movies or living civilisations you play your part in and to me it feels beyond the realm of a game you could even dream to make..

 

Well, here's the thing. One person can achieve quite a lot, but it is usually gonna cost them a lot of time.

http://gizmodo.com/10-incredible-diy-castles-built-by-just-one-single-pers-1452608410
http://www.odditycentral.com/news/dashrath-manjhi-the-man-who-moved-a-mountain.html

So, it is not a very good idea to dismiss big project as "impossible", just because it is big. Just make sure if you have the determination and are willing to pay the price if you decide to undertake something like that alone or with small team of people.

This has been done in Dwarf Fortress.

The game generates random world, populates it with animals and races and then simulates the history. Also, it keeps record of everything that ever happened.

 

I get what you are saying completely. It's just common sense really and yet at the same time this is not the way it generally is. I mean sure every game "kit" out there has their examples showing how to knock out skeleton games always stopping before the real work and effort begins. So they give the appearance that all of this stuff is easily done. Generally once we move just a bit beyond the examples often we find it's just one thing after another to wrestle with. And that just slows down progress massively. That stuff needs to be taken care of. Out of the way.

Also on the UE thing I get that part too. I don't think it's cool for people who post thread after thread here comparing U & UE. But it's entirely different for someone to personally prefer one engine or framework over another. Every person should take the time to try out different things and find out what works best for them. Because there is no best game engine, framework, programming language or whatever. There is only a best one for you. And a best one for me. I've moved to a different programming language and framework for my 2D games because it just matches my preferred workflows better. I am much more productive with it even though in many ways I am doing more work than someone using Unity would be doing. Because it is a more natural workflow for me (mainly just coding, coding, coding, some data structures, and more coding) it is faster for me than dragging around colliders and otherwise working in a visual editor. Basically you have to use the right tool for the job and also the right tool for you personally.

 

Right. I would have mentioned it but I'm fairly confident everyone already knows about it. At least everyone in this thread.

 

I'm about 100 hours into the game and have been focussing more on the main quest storyline lately. I have to say, I did enjoy the game a whole lot more before I started the main quest. I still think it's a great game, possibly one of the best in the last years, but many aspects are really really flawed nonetheless. I get the impression they looked too much at AAA games and took the wrong lessons from them.
And the combat balancing gets worse the further I progress in the game, imho.

 

Playing RPG's for more then 20 years, I can only compare Fallout 4 with a cancer. But what truly saddens me are the gamedevs praising this game. I can too, obviously, find many things to praise in every game, where so much effort was put in. But this 'tolerance' everyone tries to worship just spreads the cancer more and more. You must be very young ,or blind, or I don't know... After playing Fallout 4 for 30 hours I gave up on finding anything I could justify of what devs did to the game. Thay did not study the lore, failed on all core mechanic implementations, lazy design on every corner, skinner boxes... Hell. Do you guys ever read metacritics? The right side table, with people reviews.

The realy one positive thing about Fallout 4 I can see - we can lear from it, it teaches us on how not to make games. This is really good experience. And if you ever forget on how to make games good, get inspiration forom guys like Hidetaka Miyazaki.

To sum it all up:

because I'm sure smarter people in bigger outfits could do whatever in any engine.

You never were so far away from the truth, then within this single sentence.

 

They're targeting different audiences. While there are definitely some fans of Bethesda's games who are playing for the main story, the majority seem to be perfectly content wasting their time on other pursuits. Dark Souls seems to be focused much more on the story and progression by comparison.

We may be surprised at the success of settlements, but if we pay attention to the community we'd have noticed that many players were already trying to personalize areas of the game. There are many different types of media concerning people laying out items in games as old as Morrowind.

If you didn't enjoy the game, that doesn't mean the game was bad, it means you weren't likely it's intended audience.

 

I wouldn't exactly say that, it's got a lot of negative reviews.. I mean a LOT of negative reviews and some of it I can see and others I'm not too sure about, again with the Graphics.. Sure get out the ultra-nice outdoor lighting and it looks meh at best, but still doesn't bother me..

The mechanics seems pretty much the same, didn't like the story but I can't say I've ever played a Bethesda game where the main storyline was anything to rave about, the crafting UI for houses didn't care for and it was a bit wonky to boot. A lot of the side missions were repetitive and dull, which is where I believe one of the biggest problems came from..

I played Fallout 3 like 20 times and Skyrim I racked up who knows how many hours, I'd still play them again even today. With FO4 it was good, I enjoyed it / got my money's worth I believe. But I don't feel like I'll play it again unless some modding guru's gave it a personality overhaul.!

 

@ShadowK: I've mostly focused on reading the discussions on the sub-reddit and the main complaint seems to center around difficulty. Many people have been playing Survival and while the early game was apparently quite difficult for them they felt it almost completely went away about halfway through the game.

I honestly haven't seen much of any discussions centered around the graphics. At least outside of those people asking if their potato can run the game or not. Those on the sub-reddit just don't seem to care that much.

I haven't gotten very far in the story myself. Haven't even visited Diamond City yet.